


Acquired Vocabulary

by icarus_chained



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Humor, Inanimate Objects, Language, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-08
Updated: 2012-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-18 05:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/557606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Small crack fic, written for a prompt. Steve's shield starts talking to him. Turns out it's acquired a somewhat impressive vocabulary. Tony is ... amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acquired Vocabulary

**Author's Note:**

> Little bit of insanity for a prompt

Steve took a deep breath, subconsciously squaring his shoulders as he met Tony's confused, but not necessarily unwelcoming, gaze.

"My shield is talking to me," he said, simply. He could elaborate, maybe. Should. But he figured he should get the panic and/or accusations of being crazy out of the way first, you know?

Tony blinked at him for a second. His expression blanking a little, but drifting more towards vague confusion rather than fear or alarm or cautious 'be nice to the crazy man'. In fact, if anything, he looked a little underwhelmed. 

"Okay?" he asked, in the gentle but confused tones of a man whose armour and miscellaneous other pieces of equipment talked to him on a regular basis. Steve ... recognised his error, there. 

"My shield doesn't have an AI installed," he prompted, helpfully. "But it's talking to me anyway. I'm a little concerned?" He waved a hand, trying to encompass the problematic aspects of hearing the opinions of otherwise inanimate objects all of a sudden in one vague, slightly annoyed gesture. "I wondered if you had any ideas?"

Tony blinked rapidly. Recalibrating, Miss Potts called it. Getting his brain unstuck, Clint had helpfully translated. "What does it say?" he asked, and Steve had the distinct impression that it was more from morbid curiosity than anything else. But hey. At least he wasn't calling the doctors, yet.

Though he would in a second. Steve took another breath. Long, slow, holding for a full count of ten and letting it out soft. This ... was not going to end well.

And then, he started relaying the last fifteen or so things his shield, usually in the midst of battle, occasionally while cleaning it, had said to him. Around about the fourth phrase, Tony's eyebrows hit his hairline. The ninth, which Steve had considered fairly impressive himself, had the man's jaw gently sagging open. And the eleventh, which Steve thought even _Fury_ would have found respect for, had Tony biting one knuckle around desperately hitching breaths, his eyes bright and shocked and laughing up at Steve.

"That's ..." Tony started, and then shook his head, waiting for the snickers to die back down. "Oh, that's ... Well. It's got a soldier's vocabulary, anyway." And he pressed his hand back up against his mouth to muffle the snorting.

"Yes," Steve answered, repressively, settling heavier on his heels. He shouldn't be annoyed. He really shouldn't. If Tony'd come to _him_ and informed him that his inanimate shield had been cursing like a sailor at him, he'd probably have laughed in the man's face himself. But _still_. "Are you done?" he asked, and it wasn't at all snitty.

Tony drew in a shuddering breath, nodding desperately and waving a hand as his breathing evened out, and he stopped snorting desperately in Steve's face. "Yup," he managed. "Yeah, no, really. I'm done. I promise."

Steve glared impassively at him for another few seconds until that turned out to actually be the case.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Tony said, eventually. Grinning when Steve's own eyebrows shot up. "Well. Okay. Maybe the whole 'inanimate object talking' thing, that's a little alarming. I'll rig up some scans, get Bruce on it, see if there's any radiation or whatever going on. He can run some doctor-like tests on you while we're at it." He shook his head, biting his lip. "But the cursing thing. I wouldn't worry about it."

Steve arched an eyebrow. "Really," he said, flatly. "That wouldn't worry you at all, would it?"

Tony grinned at him, then. Bright and casual and easy, and Steve had to blink. "Nah. That third one, I recognise that one. That was Dad. He always had a filthy mouth when someone smashed his thumb open. And that one near the end, the really impressive one? I'm pretty sure that's a literal translation from the Russian, so I think you can blame that one on Natasha." He shook his head, grinning slow and wicked. "I'm not sure who the hell you were listening to to get the one with the hedgehog ...?"

Steve blinked, and flushed a little. Dum Dum had had a hell of a turn of phrase, way back when. He gathered that one was an Irish saying, maybe. Possibly. 

Tony just grinned at him. "You hang around with some foul-mouthed people, you know that?" he said, but the smile was genuine. "Baby's just doing what all learning things do. It's picking up what's being said around it." He shook his head, the smile going vaguely rueful. "You should hear Dummy talking to JARVIS. In my defense, I was seventeen, in college, and usually hung-over. I think the first dozen phrases he learned were variations on a theme of 'fuck you, asshole'." He frowned, faintly. "It took me three years to notice he was mildly phobic about sunlight, too, and another two to figure out it was because I was hungover and nocturnal most of the time he was growing up."

Steve ... blinked. He had _no_ idea what to do with that, really. Fortunately, Tony seemed to recognise this, and waved the issue off.

"Never mind," he said, heaving himself to his feet and coming over to pat Steve gently on the shoulder. "Don't worry, Cap. We'll fix this. And in the meantime ..." He grinned, slow and dangerous. "In the meantime, I suggest we do one of two things. Either we sit your shield down for a talk with JARVIS, because I guarantee you nothing will cure a potty mouth faster, _or_." He paused, grinning up into Steve's wary expression. "Or, we start lugging it around for meetings with Natasha and/or Fury. Because if you're going to have the most foul-mouthed piece of equipment on the field ... well, you should be thorough about it, shouldn't you?"

Steve stared down at him. He'd come here expecting to be called a crazy man. Because, lets be fair, telling people your shield was talking to you will do that. Now, though, he was beginning to think that nothing he could come up was going to be crazier than everyone _else_ already here.

That being the case, then ...

"I always wanted to know what Natasha said to that Hydra pilot last month," he mused, thoughtfully. "You know, the one that made Clint almost fall off the fire escape?"

The future was crazy, he reflected, looking down into Tony's shocked, appreciating grin. Genuinely, honest to god crazy.

It was kind of surprising, then, how much fun he was learning to have in it.


End file.
